DENNY DOUBLEPLUS MARKETING  This is easily one of my favorite programs on the Mac! The speed and ease with which you build webpages is amazing! Plus, you can work “under the hood” to ease into high level coding! I’ll warn you though, once you start working with it, and you start building it up with some of the many 3rd party plugins and themes, you’ll be completely addicted! It’s a lot of fun to work with. One final note, if you want to learn quickly, then go to Rapidweaver Classroom for online tutorials and don’t forget to get all of the YourHead Software’s fantastic plugins too!  
(Version 4.2.1)

MILESLONG  I think the two guys below me need to at least really try the software before writing such inane comments. You CAN build pages from scratch, there at least three different themes which come to you blank and you simply design away to your hearts content, yes, a blank canvas.

Secondly, every single theme available is modifiable. If you guys know so much about coding then you would have figured this out by now. The themes simply allow a nice looking quick template for those who aren't coders. If you are handy with code, the great themes available save you tons of hours in design and writing lines of code.

They have the best support for any software I have ever tried and if you want an answer to a problem, just go to the forums and you will have experts answer it for you within minutes usually. The only negative about Rapidweaver is that sometimes it does act buggy on my sites during design but I use an insane amount of javascript. Most people won't ever even notice this issue. Doesn't affect the way the site performs on the web either.

Again, you need to try a product before slamming it, really inaccurate posts, probably competitors or something.... Here are links to just some of the blank themes available, several are FREE as well...

http://www.realmacsoftware.com/addons/themes/blocksbox/

http://www.realmacsoftware.com/addons/themes/notheme/  
(Version 4.2.3)

IAMDORIAN  To set the record straight, I am an illustrator and designer who pioneered electronic publishing. I watched as BBs gave way to primitive (and horrible ugly) HTML web sites, and now to CSS, Flash animations and every kind of scripting language you can imagine. I don't write code. Period! Never cared to, even though I can understand logic statements. My strength is in design and all that goes along with that, and I don't want to 'code.' This holds no joy, nor interesting challenges for me. My lifetime (what's left of it) is too precious to spend typing. So, this is one application I understand.

How well do I understand it? Well . . .

The first time I sat down and began using it it required the usual 'learning curve' you'd expect from a unique GUI. However, in one long evening-into-morning session, I had a good looking preliminary web site up and running. This is the strength of RapidWeaver.

The plug-in developers (those whose products I am supporting) are responsive and clever, the themes base is constantly growing, and I cannot praise the concept behind this application enough. And yes, I have worked a tiny bit in early versions of GoLive a well as DreamWeaver. This approach is pretty intuitive, the pages are clean and load fast, and . . . work!

If you're trying to get real work done, and you don't think that coding is the 'cats' meow,' then I highly suggest that you give this inexpensive, (fairly) intuitive and creative little application a spin. I did. I think it was one of those great little (minimal) investments which have simplified my life. (If you want to see what I cranked out in one night – less additional copy – see my SpagyricArts dot com site).

Highly recommended. I'd give it six stars if I could.  
(Version 4.3rc1)

ESPIRIDION  Being critical of RapidWeaver will probably result in multiple "frowns" but here's my review.

I recently created a website, and used Freeway Pro, Sandvox, and RapidWeaver. RapidWeaver 3.5 was my first web design application, later on I purchased Freeway Pro. I may buy Sandvox but I'm not sure yet.

The best tool for the job -FOR ME- was Freeway, without a doubt.

Here are some of the issues I had trouble with while using RapidWeaver 4.3:

-Not very intuitive. This is not always a problem. I believe in reading manuals and watching tutorials. Still, there aren't many options under "Preferences." The "Page Inspector" yielded more options. "Setup" was another option that did not address what I was looking for. "Setup" does not have a Cancel button, so there's always some processing going on even without making any changes.

-Preview did not always work for me. I tried 3 times to Preview my site in Firefox, and RW took me to Firefox but there was no website to preview. It worked fine when I chose Safari. Still, it has a severe limitation; Preview seems to offer a single page preview, but it was impossible to actually preview the whole website and navigate through it. I just got the following when clicking on a page: "Safari can’t find the file."

Previewing in Freeway worked fine and allowed me to preview the whole website while navigating through it.

-I could not find a theme that worked for my simple needs. For example, I wanted a Menu which expands when the cursor is placed over it, and displays the submenu items. Modern Grunge, Tiger Pop, and other Themes have this functionality, but the finished product looked terrible, perhaps because of the narrow columns and long submenu text.

I'm sure I could do a lot of things if I spend more time using RapidWeaver, and spend some money on Themes and Addons. But why?

When I first got RW it was a $50 application, typically available for much less. Its price then increased to $79. Themes and addons are still extra.

For creating some websites quickly and easily it does work. For MY needs it was frustrating. More importantly, the finished product was not as professional as the one I got with Freeway.

RapidWeaver seems to be more comparable with Sandvox, and I preferred to use Sanvox.

The RW community is great, so it's relatively easy to find answers from other helpful users.  
(Version 4.3.0)

CHELSEL  I've been coding raw HTML and JavaScript since 1996. I've coded probably a few hundred thousand lines or more by hand. I come from a family of artists but I wasn't gifted with the same skills in visual design and creating an attractive website has always been a challenge for me. I can say however that RapidWeaver is perfect for me. It lets me whip up a beautiful site design quickly and easily. If I need to go in and tweak things then I have full access to the code. The people who said you can't change the themes don't know what they're talking about. This is a great piece of software.  
(Version 4.2.3)

WEBKARNAGE  This will produce commercial websites (I have done plenty) and is for the majority of users very stable (3 crashes since February, run pretty much every day) and is an extensible app. It will do a lot as it stands, without being too hard, and there are many free plugins and themes to get you achieving more too. Add other plugins, and it's hard to outgrow

The core app and workflow are much improved from 3.6, speeding up working significantly. I mix using code and drag and drop with great success. As for cost, what on earth is there at this price point that comes close? Nothing that I've found.

The people that struggle most often, are the WYSIWYG lot. If this statement ever translated to what you see is what everyone gets, it might be worth something, but even in Dreamweaver it doesn't, so it isn't. It is for me, the emperor's new clothes. My sites behave better across browser variations now that I admit this is the case, and work with relative positioning more than absolute. Try the RapidWeaver way, and it will work for you.  
(Version 4.2.1)

PXL  True... RapidWeaver no longer hangs on quit. Thanks for that! But it does hang while open. I had to do several Force Quits already.

There were several request(s) in your forum that should have been released in this version.

- View Older Posts... link when post count is checked

- Option to change archive date format in sidebar

- Option for drop down style for blog archive dates

C'mon!  
(Version 4.2)

KRIS251069  Excellent program. I was able to make and publish two good looking websites with a lot of features in a couple of hours without knowing anything about writing html. The best program in it's class!  
(Version 4.2.1)

MITCH BICQUET  Very happy new user (2 months) impressed by power and flexibility, have been using for personal and some small scale commercial websites - the rapid result process is unparalleled.

Excellent plugins community, very easy and powerful rapid editing and publishing.

I understand the concerns about data migration though, the project files being proprietary, and hope this won't disappoint me in the future.

It's true that it can do much more than iweb, but what iweb can do it does better and especially without the concern for extreme rigidity and lack of flexibility that iweb offers so if you are using iweb for personal sites- definitely check it out if you want to play with an extended ste of elegant features.  
(Version 4.1.3)

PAULNOJUSTPAUL  After using apps like Dreamweaver and (the excellent) NVU as well as specialised apps like iBlog (R.I.P.), happening upon RapidWeaver was both a puzzlement and a breath of fresh air.

I can understand other reviewers rating this app lower, but I think that's because they were expecting it to be something it's not. It's not Dreamweaver, GoLive, or any of those "pro level" apps where you get to micro-manage everything. Instead it takes a refreshing approach of being as simple as you like, but retaining a veritable Alice in Wonderland rabbit-hole extensibility.

I know (at a basic level) how to write HTML/CSS/XML in a text editor. Thing is I don't want to have to do that. I want to just pick a good, usable interface for my (paltry ;-) website, a basic layout, and just let the app worry about the details while I just add the content.

RapidWeaver does this beautifully.

They have a great support forum and are really pleasant/responsive to deal with too. That speaks worlds to me.

Highly recommend taking a look.  
(Version 4.1.3)